What’s on your browser’s home page? I use a customized page that resides on my hard drive that has the following major links: case law, legislation, books (catalogues), search engines/reference tools, government, news, and international. There are also a number of frequently-accessed links, including links into library catalogues, journal indices, the commercial database login pages, the Oxford English Dictionary (via U of Toronto’s e-resources, password required), and CNN, CBC and BBC.

I imagine many lawyers make their law firm’s intranet their browser’s home page; if not, I recommend customizing your own. It is way more convenient than using “bookmarks” or “favourites”.

I find that when I am helping law student’s with legal research and they are looking at my laptop, they become interested and want a copy of my customized pages, which I am happy to share. I find that when I am on a different computer (which I am now, due to a cola spill on my Dell laptop keyboard), I am at somewhat of a loss not having the customized web page. I will post copies of the pages in due course once I get my laptop back.

When I used to use Windows regularly (sounds of discreet coughing…) I made myself an active desktop — i.e. a desktop that is itself a web page. That way I could put crucial links on the desktop itself. As well, I put on some helpful graphics: one in particular was a rectangle labelled whatever was useful: today’s material, current projects, or somesuch; I could then drag document icons etc. over the rectangle and corral projects literally in a way that I could see. ( I worked with my windows at less than full expansion, so I could see and get easy access to my desktop.)

At work I have my Library’s internal web page set. At home it is Google only because I have the Google Toolbar downloaded and it has permanently frozen Google as my home page. That is a Google Toolbar “bug”. The only way to fix it is play with the Register, which is a real hassle and probably means hours of work.

Connie, I’ll post some instructions by way of another comment in a bit. But first people might like to look at Protopage: http://www.protopage.com/#, a web app that let’s you configure notes and bookmark “post its” and move them around etc. You can make it your home page and cusomize it in a bunch of ways. There’s also a bookmarklet for shipping a link to your Protopage page.

I use a custon webpage, but I actually post it in public so I can use it from anywhere. Although I’ve had it there for several years with my email address, I do not get excessive junkmail. According to my logs, I’m just about the only person that uses it.